my blog post titles demonstrate my ironic detachment and caustic verve

You really do have to wonder, at this point, if there’s ever a time when the average Gawker blogger says to himself, you know, I really am just a whiny, angry bitch, who just delights in inflicting verbal cruelty, and I appreciate the fun in being feted by other whiny, bitchy nothings who are so filled with bitterness over their utter failure to accomplish anything of meaning and value that they sit around and laugh along. Haha! That cop is choking that kid with his knee! Truly, you have spoken truth to the power of people who don’t like getting choked out unnecessarily by the cops. See it’s not just humor– there’s a moral here, people. And like every moral from Gawker, it’s “I’m better than you!”

The funniest part, of course, is what’s always the funniest part of Gawker, where a posse of white, overprivileged graduates of second-choice colleges heap derision on people for being white, overprivileged graduates of second-choice colleges. I mean, seriously, “Nilla”? Look, friend, the only thing whiter than commenting on  Gawker is writing for Gawker. Writing for Gawker is elementally white. It’s as white as it gets. I don’t care if you look like Djimon Hounsou, if you’re in the employ of Nick Denton you’ve lost the ability to snicker at whiteness. I think if Stokley Carmichael was around to see you using the civil rights movement as ammunition to embark in yet another brazen game of “I’m better than you! Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!”, he’d slap you in your vapid, knowing face.

Particularly pathetic about Gawker the last year or so is all the nods to the simple fact that whatever amount of humor and wit was once a part of Gawker was long ago bleached out by the white heat of the bloggers’ burning envy, resentment, sexual frustration and impotence. Guess what, guys? Just because you’re “knowing” about how shitty and empty your blog has been for ages doesn’t actually make it any cooler or more forgivable that your pathetic little theater of cruelty has lost anything resembling bite, honesty or intelligence. It’s pretty simple, at the end of the day: you’ve elevated a kind of put-upon, entitled bitchiness to the status of fetish, but secretly, you’re smart enough to know that you’re just like every other asshole on the bus. (Don’t tell the commenters, or there goes the business model.) There’s nothing special about you, just like there’s nothing special about 99% of us. Most of us deal with it and get with a program of trying to make things just a bit easier for one another. Some of us tell dick jokes and pretend to be Oscar Wilde when we’re actually the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

Yes, it’s true, you can engage in a never-ending stream of affect and shallow self-reflection without actually understanding yourself or engaging in a moment’s worth of genuine self-criticism. But why would you? Look, here’s the prescription: engage in some self-analysis, the real kind, the kind that disarms and shames you, the kind that leaves you absolutely less able to like yourself. Realize that you’re a pathetic cultural stereotype whose pose can’t save him from being a choch. Evolve accordingly.